Leon de Kock is professor of English at Stellenbosch University and the author of several books, including Bad Sex (Umuzi).
Poet, critic, translator. Born in Mayfair, Johannesburg, he studied at the Rand Afrikaans University and the University of Leeds. After working as a journalist for several years, he joined the English Department of the University of South Africa, where he was professor until 2006. He is now head of the School of Literature and Language Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand. \
Author of Civilising Barbarians: Missionary Narrative and African Textual Response in Nineteenth-Century South Africa (1996), he compiled (with Ian Tromp) the anthology The Heart in Exile: South African Poetry in English, 1990–1995 (1996) and was founding editor of the English-studies journal Scrutiny2. His first collection of poems, Bloodsong (1997), is a set of deeply personal poems that probe childhood experiences and grapple with understanding life in contemporary South Africa.
Poems from this collection won him the 1995 Thomas Pringle Poetry Award. He is also the translator into English of the Afrikaans novel Triomf (1994, trans. 1999), by Marlene van Niekerk. His articles on cultural politics in South Africa have introduced new dimensions to debates on postcoloniality. A second volume of poetry, Gone to the Edges, appeared in 2006.
Poet, critic, translator. Born in Mayfair, Johannesburg, he studied at the Rand Afrikaans University and the University of Leeds. After working as a journalist for several years, he joined the English Department of the University of South Africa, where he was professor until 2006. He is now head of the School of Literature and Language Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand. \
Author of Civilising Barbarians: Missionary Narrative and African Textual Response in Nineteenth-Century South Africa (1996), he compiled (with Ian Tromp) the anthology The Heart in Exile: South African Poetry in English, 1990–1995 (1996) and was founding editor of the English-studies journal Scrutiny2. His first collection of poems, Bloodsong (1997), is a set of deeply personal poems that probe childhood experiences and grapple with understanding life in contemporary South Africa.
Poems from this collection won him the 1995 Thomas Pringle Poetry Award. He is also the translator into English of the Afrikaans novel Triomf (1994, trans. 1999), by Marlene van Niekerk. His articles on cultural politics in South Africa have introduced new dimensions to debates on postcoloniality. A second volume of poetry, Gone to the Edges, appeared in 2006.